There's nothing pretentious about the Colfax Marathon. It's a humble main-street race that starts and ends in prosaically named City Park. It doesn't attract Olympians but does makes dreams come true for ordinary people with extraordinary goals.

So it was fitting that after winning it Sunday, Denver engineer Pat Sullivan was celebrating with humility before he even caught his breath.

"I'm a nobody — average Joe, father of three," Sullivan said. "I just like running."

There was nothing average about his time: 2 hours, 40 minutes, 47 seconds. The vast majority of marathoners will never run that fast. But Sullivan was modest about his achievement, giving credit to his running group.

"I ran into a good group of friends that just kept kind of breaking that ceiling," said Sullivan, 37. "I kept thinking three hours is the limit. No, 2:50 is the limit. Then they were breaking 2:40 and I started to think, 'Wow, maybe I could go 2:40.' It's a good group of other average Joes that helped break that ceiling for me."

His sister, Kelley Sullivan, ran the half marathon in 1 hour, 48 minutes, 25 seconds. Given the staggered start of the races, she finished right after he did.

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"Did you win it?" she asked him at the finish line, then yelped with glee when he told her that he did.

"He said he was going to be terrible today," Kelley teased. "He said he didn't train very well. He's the biggest sandbagger in the world."

"I'll take that right now," he said.

She said he is an inspiration. He said she is, because she was the first marathoner in the family. She ran her first one in 1999.

Kelley is certainly serious about running. She is three months pregnant with her sixth child.

"We all thought marathons were crazy, and they are crazy," Pat said. "But she was the first one to do one in the family, we all watched her do it and we kind of started thinking, 'Wow, maybe we can do it.' "

Alysha De Laurell of Colorado Springs was the top women's finisher in 2:58:40. It was only her second marathon.

"I was just hoping to beat my time from last time," said De Laurell, 21. "I didn't even know I was first. That's crazy."

De Laurell ran her first marathon two years ago in San Diego, finishing in 3:36:46. She started running in college to stimulate motivation for studying and had no idea she had talent.

Sullivan didn't realize he had talent when he was a kid, either, but he doesn't regret not getting serious about running when he was younger.

"The only way for me to look at that is, I still love to do this, I love to run," he said. "I would have hated to have done it so early that I would have burned out and not be enjoying it right now. I really do love it, and I want to keep enjoying it."

Having called himself an average Joe, Sullivan called Colfax "the Average Joe Marathon," and that was a term of endearment.

"This will be a launching pad to the Chicago (Marathon) and New York and Boston," Sullivan said. "This is a great race. I hope it keeps going when our kids are running it."

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